Chinese police publicize major organized online gambling case

BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau has publicized a major case involving organized online gambling, which was solved recently.

The gambling involved a national welfare lottery called "PK Shi" for short, which was manipulated by suspects who organized gambling groups via WeChat, China's most popular social network, and used gambling software to fix the odds in order to make sure most gamblers lost, according to Beijing police.

"The suspects usually raised the odds to attract more people to play the game, and would kick out anyone who won big prizes," a police officer surnamed Qiao said, adding that a gambler who was in it for three months lost nearly 350,000 yuan (about 52,600 U.S. dollars).

A campaign covering 21 provincial regions and municipalities across the country was launched by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) on May 17. As of May 30, a total of 61 gangs involved in the gambling were busted, with over 200 suspects arrested.

The bust was considered to have effectively cut the chain of the crime, and destroyed the illegal gambling network involving "PK Shi".

The police warned the public that any gambling activity on online platforms such as WeChat is illegal, and those involved can receive criminal sanctions.

They also warned the public of illegal online football betting, given the FIFA World Cup is going on.

The MPS has been cracking down on cross-border online gambling crimes in recent years. Since the start of last year, Chinese police have solved over 7,000 criminal cases on cross-border online gambling, busted 3,100 criminal gangs, detained and frozen 11 billion yuan, and hunted down more than 270 underground gangs dealing with illicit monetary affairs.